It’s kind of ironic, actually. You’re about to start your lives together, but first, you have to dish out all this money for a few hours.
In 2018, the average cost of an American wedding was $33,931, according to The Knot’s Real Weddings study. Sheesh! Just imagine all the things you can buy with that money!
But then again, weddings are so ingrained in our culture and tradition that not having a wedding at all is not an option for some people.
After all, marriage is a beautiful thing and deserves to be celebrated. But don’t worry, it’s definitely possible to have a wedding without spending tens of thousands of dollars.
We did, and now we’re sharing how:
Choose An Inexpensive Venue
The venue is usually the most expensive part of a wedding budget. The average spender paid $15,439 for their wedding venue in 2018, according to The Knot. When we were planning our wedding, we purposely sought after a venue that didn’t cost too much to rent, knowing we wanted to take the DIY route. Most hotels and ballrooms were out of the question because they are all inclusive (food, decor, tables, chairs, etc). Some venues even make you choose from their vendors. Luckily, we found the perfect venue for our rustic-themed wedding: a barn in Winchester, Virginia.
The rates were the best we found. We spent under $2,000 to rent out the venue for the day. And the best part? They gave us the option to cater from outside and bring our own vendors. Instead of having to spend almost $70 per head for a cuisine you may not even like, we were able to cater from a restaurant of our choice. This saved us thousands of dollars.
So think outside of the box when choosing a venue. National parks and campsites are also some budget-friendly rustic venues worth exploring, depending on your taste, of course.
Tip: Some venues offer discounted rates for couples that book their weddings on Fridays and Sundays. (Ours was on a Sunday!)
Go Paperless For The Invite
Americans spent $386 on wedding invitations in 2018. That just didn’t make sense to us to spend that much on invitations, especially at a time when everything seems to be paperless. If you are inviting a lot of guests to your wedding, we highly suggest creating an online invitation. We created our own self-hosted website for all things wedding-related to make it easier for our guests to get all the information they would need about our special day. The website itself costed us some money but not more than $50. There are plenty of free websites where you can design your wedding invite. We used Wix because it offered more options to customize our site. We were also able to send out emails to our guest list reminding them of the wedding and later, thanking them for attending. We did however, spend about $80 on thank you postcards that we sent in the mail.
Don’t Get Nit-Picky
We know, it’s your wedding and you want it to be perfect, but when you’re working with a budget, something’s gotta give. In our case, or my case really, it was the chairs. Begad and I had an actual argument about chairs. Yeah….It seems so silly talking about it, but at the time, I really wanted to rent white garden chairs instead of the chairs the venue offered at a cheaper rate. Some of the chairs were worn out (which Begad argued added to the rustic feel). Ultimately, I succumbed and we went with the venue chairs, which ended up saving us hundreds of dollars.
So if you can let go of one thing or another for the sake of saving a couple hundred bucks, then go for it.
Pro tip: We used Wedding Wire’s free budget tool to keep track of all our expenses along the way. It was a way for us to examine the estimated costs and in turn, make decisions on where we could alter the budget.
Ask Favors From Friends
The average cost of a wedding photographer in 2018 was $2,679 and $2,021 for a videographer. If you have friends who are photographers, see if they will give you a discounted rate, you know, the friends and family one.
Make Your Own Decor
Hiring a wedding planner, plus all that comes with having your decorations done for you amounts to a lot in the end. Find inspiration from other DIY weddings on Pinterest and wedding blogs and take a stab at your own decor. Instead of getting a flower-heavy centerpiece from a florist, create a simpler one. We opted for a mason jar with baby’s breath in it and a tea cup with a rose and a string of pearls from Amazon. We also found these heart cutouts from old books on Etsy. We ended up ordering some and then realized we could do it ourselves. So we bought a heart lever punch from Michaels for $6 and stamped away.
Ditch The DJ
Having bumpin’ music is important at a wedding, especially when it comes to dancing. But instead of hiring a DJ for $1,000+, make a playlist and ask a friend to be in charge of playing it. Now if the venue you choose doesn’t have a reliable sound system, it may actually be cheaper to hire a DJ, since most of the time, they bring their own speakers and mics. OR, if you don’t have hundreds of people attending, you can purchase your own Bluetooth speaker from Amazon. We actually bought this one for our engagement party and we had almost 200 people attending! We figured spending $200 on something we can use more than once was a better investment than renting speakers for triple the price.
Cut The Cake
While it’s definitely tradition for the couple to cut a gorgeously tiered cake at their wedding, more and more couples are seeking different alternatives. A quality wedding cake will cost you at least a couple hundred dollars (average cost of a wedding cake is $528), especially if you are expected to feed hundreds of sugar-craving guests. Since we chose to have a bonfire with s’more party favors, we decided to skip the cake and instead set up an assortment of tiny desserts. We also had an amazing donut tower that Begad’s family made from wood and decorated.
If having a cake really isn’t all that important to you, scrap it from the budget.
Create Your Own Party Favors
Is it just us or have party favors become so “extra” in the past couple years? If you’d rather dedicate your budget to other things, go simple with the favors. We chose to create s’more bags as our favors. We bought the materials in bulk and dedicated a day to putting them together (with the help of family and friends 🙌🏼). We customized them with a stamp from Etsy. It worked out perfectly since we had a bonfire at the end of the night.
Another option is to donate the money you would spend on favors to charity. That way you choose exactly how much to give and to a cause that’s dear to you. We saw this at a wedding we attended. In lieu of party favors, the couple wrote on the wedding program that they donated money to charity in honor of their guests.
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Throwing a DIY wedding that’s both beautiful and on budget is possible! It’ll take some work, but in the end, the time, energy and money you spend will be worth it.
We’d love to see pics of your DIY wedding…post in the comments below!
P.S. Photos in this post were taken by H&A Wedding Photography. Check them out, they’re the best!